Visiting Hours
by Lexiphane
Summary: Post!Opera. Shilo's been getting visits in the dead of night and they're not going the way she'd like them to.
1. Chapter 1

Sounds in the night make her jump, make the skin between her shoulder blades crawl as if expecting a knife or a bullet. She can't help that though and, the truth of the matter is, that the fear has faded since that first night, fleeing the Opera in a limo bought and paid for by dead Rotti Largo. Those moments of confusion allowing her to slip away without so very much trouble at all, before things started to fall back into place and the Largo children started putting things back together again.

Shilo's fingers curl in the fabric of her sheets and for a moment she thinks that she'd best just stay where she it. Somehow, after everything, a part of her still clings to the dream that in her bedroom she was safe. Funny how the room that was her cage not so very long ago has become something of a sanctuary. She doesn't though, doesn't stay where she is and wait to see what happens. Shilo can't afford that.

She is still expecting the GeneCops to come sweeping through her home, her father's home, to get rid of her. It's only been weeks and it could still happen. Sometimes she thinks that she's waiting for it to, waiting for the bite of lead and then... what? Nothing? Her parents? Dearly departed mother and loving father reunited and waiting for their precious girl?

Shilo pushes the thoughts away and drags herself from her bed, stockinged feet silent on the floorboards as she creeps to the door and out into the hall. She spent the better part of her life learning this house, learning how to move through it quiet as a mouse so that she could sneak around her father and to do it now comes almost second nature. She's at the top of the stairs, crouched near the banister with the cool metal of one of her father's scalpels in her hand. There is nothing there, no looming figure in the doorway, no teams of GeneCops tying up loose ends for the Largos. Just the ghosts of the past and milky moonlight spilling through the windows to cast misshapen puddles on the wood.

She is about to rise, toss down the scalpel in disgust - mostly at herself for jumping at shadows these days and for being so damn paranoid since, well, since dad - and a hand closes over her shoulder. Her scream spills up off her lips before she has the thought to do it, a snarling, angry sound that surprises even her and she spins away. Her arm slashes out, the scalpel a silver arch in the moonlight even as her heel slips on the top step and she feels her weight go out from under her. There is a moment of awful, gutless weightlessness and then hands on her arms, dragging her back to solid footing.

And laughter.

That damned, infuriating laugh of his even though he's bleeding where the little blade caught his chest. When he laughs his lips pull back and he bares his teeth. Shilo thinks that it looks more like a grimace then a smile but she'll never tell him that, certainly not with her heart still hammering in her chest from her near fall and his hands iron tight around her upper arms. For a moment she thinks that he has forgotten he is holding her at all. His laughter falls away, too slowly for Shilo's tastes and then, belatedly, so do his hands, falling open at his sides. His eyes are still bright with it though and it makes her jaw tight, presses her lips together in a thin like. She does not like that Graverobber finds her so amusing. His fingers find the cut, high near his collar bone, and he hisses as he rubs at it, fingers coming away dark with his blood. It's berry red like his lipstick tonight, almost too dark to be believed.

"You shouldn't startle me," Shilo sounds petulant even to herself and it's not really an apology even if she is sorry that she cut him. Or at least mostly sorry, and as more than a half concocted after thought. Sometimes she thinks that he'd deserve it if the GeneCops finally caught up with him, if he startled the wrong person. If he hadn't gone screaming in the grave yard that night all of this might have been avoided, she might have been safe. She might have been with her dad.

"You should have seen your face," whenever he speaks it is as if he is talking to a rapt audience and not just a seventeen year old girl who's spent too much time in a big empty house. He's the same as he ever is and she's not quite figured out how he makes sure that his multi-toned hair is always, always just one day away from being too greasy. He claps his hands together in what she assumes is intended to be delight and spreads them, as if taking in the full scope of her home in the gesture, "but then, you don't get out much do you?"

He's been coming by every few days since her father's death, since the opera. As if he has the right to it. Shilo hasn't figured out why exactly though every time she asks him what he's doing he gives her a different plausible answer. The first time he was looking for a place to lick his wounds - a busted lip, a black eye, a few cracked ribs - and she let him. After all, her father was fresh dead and familiar, anything familiar was comforting. The last time she asked it was to see if her father didn't have any Zydrate lying around going to waist and the time before that it had been to check on her, see if she wasn't dead yet.

"Come on, kid, best patch me up," he pushes up away from the banister he's leaning against and breezes past her down the stairs. He hesitates though, there on the top step beside her and Shilo can swear that he's bent, curled his broad shoulders in and ... did he just sniff her? His knuckles bump against her hip in what she thinks he means as a friendly gesture he's gone, half jigging, half falling down the stairs. He doesn't bother to wait for her when he heads for the kitchen. He always takes the liberty of making himself at home.

"What are you doing?" Shilo never exactly says that he can't, or that he should go. She just knows that he ought to. Graverobber is rummaging through the refridgerator as if he's expecting there to be something to eat. There isn't. Shilo's stomach is empty, achingly hollow and has been for the last twenty four hours. There are credits, plenty of them, left to her like the house was but she can't be bothered to go shopping. She hasn't left her house in weeks and she thinks that Graverobber knows it.

A part of her likes to think that it's why he keeps coming back, that he's concerned for her or as close to it as he gets.

"It wont please him," he looks up from digging through her empty fridge, condiments and soured milk are hardly appetizing, even to him. He fixes a heavy gaze on her over his shoulder, if only for a moment and turns back to shut the fridge, to riffle through bare cupboards although he does it as a cursory thing. They both know that there's nothing there. Shilo bristles though, because she knows that he's talking about her father and he doesn't have the right to, he doesn't know anything about what her dad would have wanted. As usual, as expected, it hardly stops him from carrying right on, "you staying locked away in here isn't going to bring him back."

"Shut up," her voice is sharp, sharper than either of them expected, she thinks and she pushes away from the door she was leaning against. Graverobber turns, his coat following after him in a theatrical swirl and he arches an eyebrow, his lips parting in something like surprise and she takes another step forward, her voice rising, "you shut up about him! You don't know nothing about him!"

"Weren't you supposed to change the world for him?" he drawls it, drawing the words out lazily as he strolls towards her. His long stride eats the distance between them until he is standing just before her and leans closer. He is so much bigger than she is, not just in height but in general and she's sure that he realizes it too, "pretty hard to do cooped up in the homestead."

The crack of skin on skin is echoingly loud in the otherwise empty - empty as a tomb, she thinks to herself - house and his head turns with it. Her palm stings and she can feel the tingle of it even as she drops her hand, steps back in horror at what she's done.

Or rather, she almost steps back, she gets halfway there, hands coming up to cover her mouth before his hands find her arms again. She's noticing a trend here. He holds her still, keeps her where she is, close to him and not quite touching. When he turns to look back at her he rolls his head, like a beast, his hair sliding forward over his shoulders and he manages to look up at her through lidded eyes despite being head and shoulders taller than she is. His chest rises and falls with heavy breath and his lips are parted. When his tongue darts out to moisten his lips, drawing a slick sheen over them she can't help but watch it.

Her heart is hammering in her throat, hands pressed over her mouth and his fingers flex on her arms. His hands are large, heavy and inescapable. Shilo almost struggles in his grip, almost tries to pull away but there is something about the strength of his hands that says she will not be able to. He leans forward and she can smell his breath, stale coffee and beer. He curses when he pulls away and he has the foulest mouth she's ever heard but it's over before it starts and he's gone. The front door bangs hollowly behind him and there is a ringing in her ears; there are things left unsaid lingering in the air.

The next time he comes to see her - sixteen hours later, not that she's counting - he brings groceries.


	2. Chapter 2

There are deep grooves carved in her family's dining room table by the years, by dinners she imagines must have been shared by her parents. Her house is a stranger to her, it's hallways familiar on the paths she took from bedroom to hidden doors, to graveyard, but it's rooms, the places where her parents lived their lives before her? They are strange, alien and unknown, seemingly unknowable. She pulls her feet up onto the seat with her, curling herself down around her knees, fingers picking at her tights as her gaze catches on every time worn wound on the hard wood. Her stomach is gnawingly empty with equal parts hunger and grief today - is it tonight? Shilo hasn't checked the time yet, hasn't pulled open any of the heavily curtained windows - and there is a loneliness chaser sticking awkwardly in her throat.

Immovable, a lump she cannot swallow.

She thinks perhaps she will go out today, maybe she will face the world if only so that she can actually eat in the next little while. Daddy died saving her life and a part of her is screaming that she's letting him die in vain. Still, any plans she has for going outside are only vague outlines, things that -maybe - she might do if nothing else comes up. So far things that have proven more important than getting herself food have included sitting in the dark and standing outside her father's bedroom door.

A floorboard creaks in the hallway, protesting under the weight of a visitor who doesn't know the house well enough to avoid it. She tenses, her body going stiff and she rolls her head to watch the doorway. She isn't sure if she's going to reach for that scalpel, sink back into the shadows near the wall or if she's going to sit, wait for whatever is coming.

There is still blood on the blade, Graverobber's blood. She hasn't cleaned it yet, just left it where it lay at the top of the stairs for the better part of the day, tip toeing around it. Graverobber ran and it's nothing new. She imagines that he must do a lot of running in his line of work. Running from other pushers. Running from GeneCops. Just running. He has it down to an art.

Her nail catches in her stocking and it frays under the edged that she's chewed sharp with nerves and it is startling. It is a little thrill of a scrape and it spills her out of the chair, curls her fingers around the cool handle of the blade and takes a half step into the shadows that bank the walls. Daddy died for her, she's not going to let that go to waste. Not today in any case.

He calls out to her this time. Still smarting from her reaction to last night's unannounced visit and she doesn't know she is surprised that he is back. He is forever coming back and yet. Shilo lets out a shivering little laugh, or as close to a laugh as she's gotten in the last few weeks and steps forward, towards the door.

For a moment she lets his whistle hang in the air, watching as he collapses his body against the doorframe, broad shoulders curving. He leans his head back, stretches the line of his throat and watches her with lazy eyes. He seems, in a word, at rest but Shilo read somewhere that crocodiles used to do the same thing before they gulped down poor little fish, lulled into a false sense of security. She tilts her head, feels the false hair of her wig slide across her shoulders.

"That's Blind Mag's song," she tells him, her fingers tingling in the remembering. She thinks, perhaps that she can still smell that garbage truck on her skin. His chin jerks up, his laugh is more like a bark. He remembers too. He pushes up from the door frame, hesitating for a moment and she is startled when he seems uncertain. The moment is gone almost as soon as she recognizes it for what it is and he lets himself sprawl into the chair that she has only just vacated. His boots are muddy when he props them up on the table and _leans_. His spine curves, slouching himself into the chair even as he rocks it back on the back legs with the length of his legs, the ball of one foot pressing against the edge of her table.

"S'pose it was," he is not looking at her, hands folding across his chest but she can hear his smile. She can taste the edges of it when she breaths, mixed in with that cool, unmistakable scent of death that he brings with him wherever he goes. She talks a half step forward and he lets his head fall back, multi-hued hair spilling down the back of his chair. When he swallows in time to the moment she first swallows past that lump loneliness left in her throat - maybe his loneliness had matched hers, shot for shot, or at least she finds it pretty to think so- she can see the rise and fall of his adam's apple. He rolls his eyes to watch her, and the edge of his smile deepens, "not much she cares now, huh?"

Shilo shoves his feet off the table, suddenly angry that he has gotten grave dirt where her parents used to eat. Parents who are lying dead in one of his graveyards. He is thrown forward, pitches to keep his balance and it brings his body close to hers, his leg pressed against hers where he tried to steady himself. His hair is tickling her arm where it is braced against the table and for a moment neither of them bother to move. And then he laughs.

Same self satisfied, too certain laugh just this side of hysteria.

"First hit's free," he tells her, stretching back in the chair, long legs unfolded under the table. Her hand tenses where it is on the table and her body goes stiff. Shilo does not know how she will answer when he offers her oblivion and the uncertainty eats at her as much as the hunger does. Can Shilo forget all that death and blood? Can she forgive herself if she does. He digs into that bag of his, worrying one dark lip between blunt white teeth until he pulls out - seemingly triumphant - and brown paper wrapped package and deposits it with absolutely no ceremony at all on the table.

The edge of the paper peels back of it's own volition and she takes it from there. The paper crinkles under her fingers like the wings of her bugs and she feels, with parts of her body that have nothing to do with it, the give of the packaging under her hands. Milk. Bread. A few apples. Groceries. His hands are folded behind his head, body stretched out in the chair and his eyes are closed. He looks perfectly at peace, as though he has not surprised her more than she ever thought he could.

He has not changed his shirt, has not washed it yet and his blood is dark where it stains the pale material. She lets the scalpel fall on the table from where it is still clutched in her hand like life line. He quirks a dark eyebrow at the rattle of it's fall but does not move, does not even open his eyes to look at her. Not until her thumb brushes against the scab she left on his collar bone. She leaves a shine of spit behind where she wet her thumb on the edge of her tongue, wipes blood away, dilutes it on her skin.

He has an iron grip on her wrist faster than she can see him move, looming over her as he leans her back across the table. Her other hand goes to steady herself and knocks an apple, sets it rolling. THe sound of it hitting the floor is loud beside the rush of his breath just inches from her face and she knows how wide her eyes must be. He looks down at her hand in his and she follows his gaze. His skin is dark only in comparison to her own and there is dirt under his nails. He lifts her hand and she does not try to stop him.

When she remembers human speech she's going to talk to him about him man handling her about all of the time.

Her thumb presses against his lips and for a second he resists, as if it is her controlling the motion and not him puppet mastering her. His mouth his warm, wet and Shilo isn't sure why that surprises her, draws a little gasp off her lips. His tongue rubs against the pad of his thumb, the edge of his teeth threateningly close to her skin and she realizes that he is tasting his own blood where it mixed with her saliva.

He pulls away then, watching her with zydrate blue eyes. Graverobber does not release her hand however, holds it near his chest. His grip goes soft for a second and his other hand comes up, tangles in the hair of her wig and shifts it, settles it back on her head as it should be.

And doesn't exactly run away. The effect is the same though, one minute he is there, as he always is, impossible and impractical but - somehow - still wanted and then? Nothing. Just the smell of death on the air, the way her thumb is rapidly cooling. Shilo looks down at her hand, where her thumb is bright with spit and lifts it to her mouth.

He tastes like she thought he would, cool and soft, like grave dirt, cemetery bugs.

**a/n**: I'm concerned about my Graverobber in this chapter. Does he seem... you know, alright? Not the gooey inside Romeo bullshit romance hero?


	3. Chapter 3

She is laying in the hall when he comes next, an apple - his first gift to her - core discarded near her hand and her hair spread out around her face like a black halo. She feels him coming first, the rumble of his boots on the hardwood, shuddering under her cheek when she turns to press her skin to it but hears him next. His foot falls are heavy, the leather of his jacket creaks, the zydrate in is bag rattles and chimes together. Shilo sees him in inches.

The dirty toes of his boots, all those buckles, leather pants, hideous belt, worn shirt, skin and hair and pulse point. Dark painted lips.

She hangs there for a minute, imagines that she sees fangs where his mouth has fallen open in a pant. Her hand slides down, away from the apple core, to rub her fingers across one of those big metal buckles. She's been making a slow progress through the house, reacquainting herself, she thinks, with each room as it is alone and in her freedom; without father, doctor, keeper, jailer, best friend. She waits in each room, she realizes, until he comes and brings life back into it with the stench of death still on his skin.

"I see Rapunzel is getting in on Snow White's action today," his words are mocking, warm and familiar and there is a twist on his mouth because - and she's sure of this by now - he actually likes her. His gaze stutters though, drops from her face to her thighs and, belatedly, Shilo can feel that her skirts have ridden up, that there is pale flesh exposed to him and the frilled edge of her bloomers, "or maybe Eve."

"fuck off" she can feel the heat of a blush on her cheeks but she stubbornly keeps her eyes on his face, shoves her skirt down with finely trembling hands. He cackles when she swears and there is no other way to describe the rumble of his laughter, the hard edge, the crackle of electricity. Kitchen, dining room, hallway, all breathed back to life and there is still so many rooms to do and God only knows how long before he gets bored of these visits of his.

"She's swearing now, ladies and gentles, look out," his hand is hard and calloused in hers as he drags her up to her feet as if she weighs nothing. And to him it's probably true, she remembers the ease with which he man handled that corpse about. More dragging her around, though, really going to need to have that conversation. He smiles, one side of his mouth lifting before the other so it looks lopsided before it's complete. "I'm rubbing off on her."

"You're so gross," She touches that corner of his mouth, the one that always goes first with two soft fingers and the smile fades, in parts, in reverse. Still lopsided. _ She_ smiles then, lets her fingers fall away because they still tremble with the feel of his skin even after she rubs them on the silk of her dress. He opens his mouth, as if he's going to say something, to make some smart mouth crack and she smiles blithely, "I'm not that sheltered, Graverobber, I understand the concept of innuendo."

"Just stopped by to use your laundry services, kid," he says it as if he actually believes that, as if he actually means it and Shilo's stomach goes hollow again. Sheltered, lonely teenage girl all alone in a big empty house with money and no one to keep men like him - well not quite like him because no one can be - from taking advantage of her. But he toes the apple core, his nose wrinkling as if in disgust even though she knows that he digs through worse every day on behalf of his junkies and she shakes the thoughts away.

She nods wordlessly, picks her way around the apple core towards the staircase, in the direction he just came from. Anyway, he helps himself to everything else so it's not as if he came up to ask if he can use the laundry. He is a hovering shadow behind her as they descend the steps, make a quick trek through the dark hall and delve back down dark stairs.

The basement is a subterranean dungeon, ill lit, poorly heated and mostly forgotten. A bare lightbulb swings above the washing machine and it casts dancing light as she flips up the lid on the machine. She should probably do some laundry herself, it's been more than a little while and she is likely not smelling her best.

Shilo knows, before she turns what he is doing and yet she does it anyway. His coat is abandoned behind him on a forgotten, never repaired rocking chair and he is tugging his shirt up and over his chest. It leaves his hair in a worse state then it was when he started - not that she quite believed that possible - and she reaches out to touch it, to smooth all that wild colored hair back into place. Her hands find the buttons on his vest, small nickel things that are cold on the pads of her fingers but his skin is warm when she pushes the fabric back off his chest. It joins his shirt, with nearly silent collapse, in the bottom of the laundry machine. He bends at the shoulders, his hair spills forward and they are breathing the same air, panting against each other to share a breath. Her hands twist on his belt and his join them, stilling the flutter of movement for a space of heart beats. He doesn't quite kiss her and she doesn't quite want him to but their noses brush together, their foreheads bump awkwardly and he helps her unfasten his belt. He's the one who drags it out of his belt loops as her fingers find the zipper of his pants. They both stand there, her little hands at his hips, lower, his pants undone a dark line of hair drawing down from his navel to lower - better, she thinks - things.

There are zydrate vials strapped to his thigh, boots buckled to the knee and his pants aren't going anywhere until those are dealt with. She's loathe to go, however. When her knees hit the ground she thinks she hears him whisper her name but she can't be sure because the blood is roaring in her ears and it is a damn good thing daddy isn't poisoning her anymore because she doesn't want to blank out on a second of this. His boots are easy, buckles are simple and he steps out of them for her, hands hanging innocently at his sides, fingers spread as if to prove he's no danger. Which is a _lie._

It's the little vials that are difficult, not because the leather is stiff and the buckles are rusty and ill kept but because her fingers brush his leather covered thigh as she works and his hips flex. Were she not so close - just a breath away, really - she probably wouldn't have seen the way the muscles in his abdomen ripple under his skin.

The vials fall away and she cushions them in her lap, careful of them because they mean something to him.

"I can fit your dad's stuff, go grab me a pair of pants," his voice is light, easy as if his heart is not hammering in his throat the way hers is. She startles at it, almost sneers because it seems so out of place but he arks a dark eyebrow, gives her a look that says she should already be on her way to do his bidding and, damn it, she goes. Shilo scrambles to her feet without any grace at all and makes her way up the stairs, long limbs - gawky, ugly, things she thinks - sending her in a stilted progression up and up and away and

"Shilo," his voice is almost lost under the rumble of the machine. Almost. She freezes, listening to the slither of leather on skin and almost doesn't turn to face him. When Shilo does turn, in parts, at the waist, hips frozen where they are she is clutching his zydrate to her chest like a child would a favourite plush. Or, more accurately, like a junkie. He has his back to her, is tossing his pants in the large sink to wash them - leather probably doesn't do well in a washing machine - and even bathed in shadow as he is she can make out the unbroken line of his side. He tips his head up and back, catches her eye on the curve of his jaw, "there's a six pack on the kitchen table. Grab me one, kid."

The door to the basement closes behind her and she sags, her strings cut. Her spine bows against the wood and she sinks to her haunches, the air coming out of her with a sound like wings and her head bumps the wood. She can taste her pulse and she thinks she can still feel the heat of his breath on her face, the electricity of his skin. When she finally scrambles up to find a pair of pants and get that beer for him it is with baby bird grace, awkward and fumbling and brand fucking new.

**AN: **I'm looking for a beta. Any takers? I'm looking for someone who can help me when I muddle pronouns and use the wrong their/there/they're as well as keep my Graverobber from turning into a romance hero.


	4. Chapter 4

The beer is cold in her hand, beads of condensation slicking between her palm and the aluminum. In comparison to lingering heat on her skin, the only-just-slowing drum roll of her heart it is soothing. But she still can't seem to pull open the door and descend, down to him - down to his level? - where he waits for her in the semi dark. A pair of her father's pajama pants are tucked under her arm, the zydrate still cradled against her chest. Her thumb rubs across the cap of one little glass vials and she draws something like strength from the unforgiving edge of glass against her skin. Shilo feels as though she can sense the heat of him through the door, as though she can feel his heartbeat and her mouth is dry.

There are no words in human speech that prepared her for him, no book that told her that all of the carefully contained chaos of his life would sweep into hers and leave her... Leave her what? Breathless, speechless, gasping? Her finger nail catches on the edge of the cap, jars uncomfortably and she draws herself together, gulps down the musty air of a home that has not seen enough open windows and bright days. The door comes open easy enough, washing her with the rumble of the machine, the metallic clatter of it and the purr of running water. Shilo can feel slivers in the wood under her feet, lit by the wash of blue glow and she focuses on that, watches each foot fall as if it were vitally important.

That's why she is almost at his side when she is knocked breathless. He has obviously taken the liberty of using the sink to wash up a little and his skin is shined with it, water dripping from his long hair to track glistening lines down the play of muscles in his back. He senses her - or maybe she says something to him, Shilo can't recall when she relives the memory later - and he tilts his head towards her, smirks and it is a baring of fangs. She follows the slow progression of a single bead of water down the curve of his spine, watches as it catches on lines of muscle and detours, slides across his hip and descends over his thigh. His chuckle is a warm burr in his chest and his shoulders shudder with it.

Still he does not turn to face her and Shilo hasn't quite decided if she's pleased or disappointed.

"That you, Kid?" he half turns to face her, twisting at the waist and she can make out a badly healed scar over his chest, over his heart and she wants to touch it. He lifts a wicked eyebrow and she tears her gaze away from his skin, focuses on the bridge of his nose. Safe, innocuous, sexless. He has washed all of that make up off and without it he looks almost handsome, in a traditional sense rather than the raw, heart pounding, blood and bone sense that she's been finding increasingly ... inescapable.

"No," Shilo can taste the sarcasm on her tongue, feels the weight of it, the bite of it and she enjoys it. She has to shuffle close, half turn so that he can snag the pants from the curve of her elbow and his bare thigh presses against her hip for a second. And then a second more. His body turns, his weight shifts and he presses against the side of her body with his thigh, touching hip to knee so that the bare patch of skin between socks and the hem of her skin can brush his. He is on fire, she is sure that she will ignite with it and she gives a full body tremble. The heat in his eyes makes her look away.

He swears viciously when she presses the cold beer can against the curve of his spine and she takes control of her body back, skips back a step so that she can no longer feel the heat radiating off his skin. Graverobber tugs the beer out of her hand and pops the tab one handed. He is scowling at her when the head starts to spill up out of the can, drip against his fingers and he seals his mouth against the opening, knocks his head back to drain the spilling head in a long swallow but his eyes are dancing.

Shilo turns her back on him, sets his zydrate down near his coat, only half surprised that he let her walk out with it. They both know she's had more than enough chemical dependency in her very short life. She wraps her arms around her stomach when he puts down the beer can, moves to pull on his pants. Her head falls back and she is panting for breath between chapped lips. Somehow her chest is tight, constricted and for a moment she sinks into the quiet of her mind, the shiver of heat on her skin where he has touched her.

She conjures the cool taste of him on her skin.

When he touches her arms she sags back against his chest, lets him brush his thumbs across her shoulders and rest his chin on the top of her head. His heart beat hammers against her chest and his hands slide lower, until his fingers twist between hers. His head shifts, his forehead bumps against the back of her throat and she feels the way his chest caves in when he curves his spine to do it. His skin is damp, his hair cold where it touches her shoulders but she lets him nudge her head to one side, gives and inaudible little sigh when his lips find her throat, not kissing her, not really, just breathing along the curve of her neck. She thinks, for a moment, that she feels his tongue flicker - snake like- on her pulse point but the moment is gone before she's certain of anything. Time slows, her focus narrows to the places he is touching her as he guides one of her hands to the side of her thigh. It is her fingers which curl into the hem of her skirt, dragging up so that his calloused hand can brush the skin revealed there.

His teeth find the curve of her shoulder, pressing but not demanding and she mewls. There is nothing to be done for it. The sound spills up, unbidden from her mouth and her head tips, turns back so her cheek brushes the wet of his hair. Blindly her mouth finds the curve of his cheekbone, the oval of his eye. The edge of his jaw is rough with stubble under her lips and his mouth is warm, amazingly warm like the rest of him. His lips are chapped, dry and they catch at hers, drag oddly. She has never tasted beer before and she knows - knows it like her heart beat - that she will never taste it without thinking of him.

"Yes," the word comes as a hiss, a whisper, a demand against the hollow of his mouth, echoing against the stutter of his breath and his hand flexes on her thigh, nails catch at her skin. And then he is gone, too far to reach out for, too quick to stop. He hovers at the edge of the stairs, drags one hand through his hair to pull out the tie that keeps some of it back, shakes like a dog.

He is looking anywhere but at her and when she says his name - plaintive, needy even to her own ears - he is reluctant, he looks at her bit by grudging bit.

"Kid," Shilo thinks that she can see him putting himself back together, thinks that she can see the way he slides into arrogance and detachment like a favorite coat and her mouth still tastes of him. He cracks a roguish smile that doesn't quite meet his eyes and he ascends the steps, tossing his words over his shoulder "I'm going to grab a little shut eye before the laundry's done. Throw it in the dryer when it's time."

He vanishes into the shadow of the hallway and Shilo tips her head, follows the tread of bare feet on hardwood as he makes his way through her home as though he has the right to it. Alone in the basement her skin feels tight, painfully tight and she fists frail hands into the fabric of her skirts. But really, a part of her thinks sneeringly, what else did she expect. Her body folds in on itself, sinking down onto that long abandoned rocking chair where his coat lies and she wraps herself in the scent of it. The chair creaks when she moves, it won't rock anymore but she doesn't need it to, she just needs his jacket to smell like him. When the laundry is done she'll fold it, set it at the top of the stairs for him and go to her own bed but in the moment, alone with the flickering light and the rumble of the dryer she can wrap herself in the way he smells, the way she can still feel calloused hands on her thigh and feel like a normal girl, all hormones and hapless crushes.

The buzzer of the dryer is startling, shakes her out of a half sleep that drew images of water tracking down pale skin through her mind and pulls a little shriek off her lips. But she is alone with the frantic hammer of her heart and no one is there to see her blush of embarrassment. Brave Shilo Wallace, faced down Largos and an angry Repo Man and she's jumping at shadows. She snorts and it is as far from ladylike as she can manage.

Dad would have scolded her, like he always did when she was vile, and yet there was always a little dance in his eyes, there was always a "so like your mother" that followed it.

Thinking of her father still hurts, still makes the hollow in her chest, where her heart ought to be feel achingly large and empty, as though it can never be filled. Sometimes she wonders if she has a heart left at all but no, Gravedigger's mouth on her skin sends it hammering in her chest like a caged beast and there is no more denying it. Part of her feels guilty, as she carries still warm from the dryer laundry up the stairs in a neat pile - leather pants on the bottom because they're still sort of damp and never got thrown in the dryer - clutching them to her chest. His boots hang from one hand at her side and she picks her way to where he is sprawled on the couch.

His legs have fallen haphazardly, one spilling off the edge of the couch he is far too tall to sleep on and his arms spread wide. Moonlight peaks through cracked curtains and spills across the pale of his face. He doesn't move, doesn't even stir when she drops a blanket across his chest, tucking it around him as best as she can and Shilo wonders at that. Can't be safe to sleep that deeply, not in his line of work. She hesitates before she goes, crouches beside him, his clothing left at the foot of the couch for him and her fingers brush the curve of his eyebrow, follow the high planes of his cheeks.

"It sparks," his mouth is soft, pliant under her lips and somewhere in his bone deep slumber he is aware of her because he comes inches closer to awake, leaning up to return the kiss now. There is a mumble off his lips and he's still too deeply asleep for her to make out what he's trying to say but it doesn't matter. When she stands and lets herself out of the living room, makes her way up to toss out the apple core she abandoned in the hallway she knows that he will not be there when she wakes up in the morning.

She also knows that she will go out and see the world tomorrow, see that it is still standing and maybe it'll be enough to keep her occupied until he makes his way back.

bAN:/b I want to thank everyone who offered to beta for me, I've found a great beta who I'm just adoring but I really appreciate everyone who offered. Also? It's so nice to have the login working properly isn't it?


	5. Chapter 5

He doesn't come back for a long time and Shilo gets used to it without him. She keeps herself busy, it is what she has always done and it comes second nature to her now. She has gone outside, does it every few days to pick up groceries, slowly making her way further and further from the house with each trip. She acquaints herself with the streets around her home and it is not long before her feet can find the way home without her having to pay attention to it. So she can look around, she can enjoy the watery sunlight brave enough, stubborn enough to force its way through heavy clouds of smog and pollution. They say that the earth was green once but under all the grey brown olive drab filth she sees Shilo cannot quite believe their words are true.

It's not just the outside world that Shilo is taking on however; it's the home that was a prison. The home that trapped her father just as surely as he trapped her. Forcing them both to live in the unending loop of despair that surrounded her mother's death, murder, the accident. The blackout curtains go first, torn down in a fit of pique and left, not quite forgotten, in the living room until she can figure something to do with them. There is dusting to do, seemingly years of it and years of _things_ that her father has collected, macabre medical supplies, macabre memories of her mother's life, pictures, articles of clothing, a lock of hair. The house benefits, slowly, over days of steady focus and she almost doesn't notice all the progress.

It is midmorning when the changes really hit her, when the sun slants, intrepid and milky through freshly washed windows across her kitchen table, across breakfast dishes and a half finished piece of toast with raspberry jam. Shilo realizes, for the first time, that she can breathe. She goes to it with a vengeance then, inspired by the thought that maybe some of this is making a difference and she tears into repairs with renewed vigor.

It is only her father's room that she leaves untouched, respecting the memory of him and unready - or perhaps just unwilling - to deal with the ever present ache in her heart. Or the guilt of facing the uneasy truth that the ache is fading, that some hours aren't as bad as the rest and she doesn't hurt with missing him. By the time the sun has set two weeks - longer, sixteen all alone in the silence days, not that she's counting - after Graverobber last dropped by Shilo has cleaned the house top down, sorted the bits of her parents' lives into piles that she doesn't quite know what to do with yet.

It doesn't feel like a prison so much anymore and sometimes she forgets entirely to be torn between wanting out more than she wants to breathe and being too terrified of everything out there to leave. She is not changing the world yet, but she is changing her life and Shilo thinks that it's a good enough place to start. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run. So she's crawling, digging her heels in and making a go of this.

Of course, when she stops, when she sags onto the staircase, tips her head back and lets herself rest the loneliness creeps back. It has been days and she doesn't know what she expects, she just knows that his uninvited, unscheduled visits filled the empty space in the night, filled the house with something other than herself and the ghosts and now he's gone. She extends back, lets her body unfurl over the not so comfortable slope of the stairs, arms spread at her sides crucifixion style and lets herself just sink into the wood, just melt bonelessly against the grain of it. Her skin feels dusty, her muscles faintly sore, as if her body is angry at her for working it so hard after a life of bed rest and forced illness.

The door creaks and there are heavy footfalls and then the sound of a falter, a stumble, cussing. She knows that voice so well, can feel the low vibration of it against her skin already and she scrambles up, smoothes her shivering hands over her skirts to settle them back as they ought to be. He is as he always is, make up stark, hair wild but there is a smile on his face that is too easy, unprovoked and it makes her skin tense makes her nervous. He takes a half step, tucks his hands inelegantly into the front pockets of his pants and rocks back on his heels. He lets his head roll to one side, examines her as if she is of the utmost interest and wets his lip with a swipe of his tongue. For a moment she doesn't know what to say to him, it seems to her that there are still days between them, catching in her throat like candy floss. Cloying, choking, nauseating.

"D'you have ... " his voice trails off his, gaze slides away from her, slides heavenward and he is so still and so silent that for a moment Shilo dares to think that he is praying. She can't for the life of her figure out who would listen to the prayers of a man like him but whoever it is she hopes they're in a giving mood. From all the way across the lobby - not quite hiding at the base of the stairs - she can taste something like desperate on her tongue. She still hasn't figured out if the iron tang of it is her own or his, airborne and inescapable. He snaps, a sharp sound that startles her out of the study she has been making of his jaw - he needs to shave; there's a dark shadow of hair on his skin that partially obscures a tiny white scar high on the curve of his chin which she is entertaining thoughts of licking - and it drags her attention back up to his eyes, not as sharp as they once were, burned warm at the edges and unnaturally bright, "D'you know it's been 379 hours since I saw you? In the laundry room?"

Her skin feels tight and warm when he counts the spaces between them in hours and the only thing keeping her from reaching out to him is the fists she has balled in her skirt. He takes a half step towards her and hesitates. When he tugs a pocket watch from his pocket he snorts, shakes his head.

"380," he amends, sounding almost sheepish that he's been counting wrong. He makes as if to take another step towards her and sways, feet planted fast to the floorboards and body seemingly rebellious about that. His eyes close and a crease forms between his brows. When he looks up at her again Shilo is struck by the weight of years behind the zydrate blue of his eyes. The man is weary, aching with the press of time on him and Shilo seems to realize, for the first time that he is almost her father's age. She rubs her finger across the crease in his brow before she realizes that she has made her way across the room to him. His skin is hot to the touch and when her flesh presses against his - forcing her up onto her toes to reach because he will not bend for her - he just leans.

One large hand comes up and ghosts against her hip. For a moment in which Shilo goes vibratingly still, breath held, heart choking in her throat, she thinks that he will touch her. She has a few glorious heartbeats in which his fingers promise to curl hard against her skin, drag her close, remind her what his skin smells like - although she's hardly forgotten, it haunts her on the blanket he used, the one she's moved up to her room- but he never follows through. He pulls away to quickly, talks a half dance step around her body and heads, on uncharacteristically clumsy feet, towards her kitchen.

She considers this, lingering in the entry way so that she can go on feeling the heat of his hand hovering over her skin just another moment longer. Graverobber is consistently graceless, rough around the edges and forceful and yet - somehow - never clumsy. When she does eventually join him in the kitchen, sneaking after him on quiet as mice feet to linger in the doorway, he is leaning heavily on her table, hands braced on the edge. His knuckles have gone white with his grip. He hears her, despite her try at utter silence - if boneyard spooks can't sneak up on him all incorporeal and haunting, who is she to try? - and regards her with fogged eyes. His jaw is slack.

"S'your fault," he tells her, voice coming rough, burning the edges off of his words and robbing him of his hard edge. She licks her lips, slicking them bright and shining as she tastes the velvet edge of the syllables. She breaths in his letters. His head falls forward, his eyes falling closed and he shudders.

"Are you _high_?" it comes sharper than she intended, more of an accusation than she meant it to be and for that she is sorry. His head jerks back, a snort of laughter tossing his hair back over his shoulder and he turns to face her, a great show of concentrated effort. His hips sink back against the table top, arms folding crossed over his broad chest and he regards her with eyes going steadily darker. It seems to her that all the zydrate vitality is going out of his sneer and she feels as though maybe she's seen the man behind the bravado and her stomach twists.

These are no butterflies. She thinks that perhaps there are bats swirling in her stomach, choking down all of her bravery so she is frozen, childish in the doorway.

"You're young," he says it not as if he's just realizing it but as though he ought to be reminded of it. She can feel the way he tastes her years on his tongue and her chin tilts, throat stretches, gives him better access. He watches her as though he wants to shoot her up, drink her down, possess her. She wonders if her eyes have taken on all his zydrate blue. He seems to shake himself, makes a show of bustling around the kitchen. Drinks two full glasses of water in breathless drags before wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, not daring to face her when he speaks again, "not _high_, kid, just drunk. Good dealer never messes with his own shit."

"I'm not that young," she's ignoring the logical parts now, the convention of conversation which demands that she focus on the parts that he's safe with. She has no stomach for polite now, with the bats eating her courage in moments measured by his heart beats. It's now or never, leathery wings beating against her guts "I'm not that much younger than you."

His head falls back, his eyes fall closed and his lashes are a dusky shadow on skin pale with powder. She wants to brush her fingers across them, see if he's even real - she's had more than a lifetime worth of dreams in which he is at once Big Bad Wolf and Woodsman, savior and devourer - but she doesn't, she presses her hands flat against her stomach. Holds the bats in. When he looks at her the glow is gone from his eyes. Like this she can see that they are more gray than blue, storm clouds instead of eyes and his is tired.

"Yeah, kid," his voice drags, still burned around the edges, still smoldering but going out in a wash of smoke. She thinks he'd prefer a blaze of glory. Perhaps that is what has stolen the glow from his eyes, "you're that much younger than me."


	6. Chapter 6

He is fading fast, his head falling forward, eye lids heavy, closing ever few moments before he jerks himself back into awareness. The man has been taking hits off a hip flask every few moments since he arrived, watching her over the top of it with stormy eyes shot through with zydrate lightening. He watches her with eyes like she's betrayed him and it makes her skin feel tight, makes Shilo wish he'd stop. He burns like a furnace beside her, putting off more heat than she imagines possible and unless she wants him to sleep right here on the table she'd better start moving him somewhere else. Graverobber is unwieldy, broad and so much taller than her. He's almost a dead weight for which she has no leverage to aid in their half falling, half stumbling progress up towards the second floor. The stairs are a near disaster and she has to stop part way up, leaning back against the banister as he slumps over her. Covers her entirely in the heat and scent of his skin. His mouth and nose are pressed against her throat and he gives a low rumbling laugh, pets a hand across the curve of her hip as if she were a favourite pet.

"Y'smell good," he mumbles, rubbing his face on her skin and she flames, blood rushing to flush her pale cheeks even as she betrays herself with a full body shiver. He's going to undo her. Still, the idea of letting him sleep on the couch again never crosses her mind. It is the better choice, easier to manoeuvre him there - no pesky stairs that she's trying to drag his uncooperative weight up again, stumbling like a new born colt - and, in so many ways that defy her to name them, safer. His eyes, still grey like storm clouds are dangerous. He is no longer graceless and wild but touchably human.

In some ways Shilo had hoped that this glimpse of him - the man and not the character - would sober her, would ease the intoxication of his skin and remind her of his age. Would shake her off of him. If anything it only makes it worse, makes her skin shiver when he stands to close and she feels certain that her heart is learning to beat in time with his. She wants to taste the skin just below his jaw.

His weight tips her over and she's too tangled round the lanky twist of his body to correct herself as they fall together. Her shoulder jars hard on the door of a long unused spare bedroom and she lets herself sag. The door gives a hollow, wooden sound when she drops her head back against it and she allows herself the moment to just let his weight lean. She can feel a fine bead of sweat on her spine and unless he starts actually helping her she's not going to be able to get him much farther.

She is constantly amazed by the sheer size of him. He is such a showman that she always expects his larger than life appearance to be some trick of the light. Nothing to worry about here folks, just smoke and mirrors because no one can be this beautiful, this dangerous, this built to last. His hair tickles the bare skin of her collar bone and he hums a jaunty tune against the skin of her throat, trailing off as he forgets what he's singing, picking up again on a different song that he thinks is the same tune.

She fumbles; hand twisted awkwardly behind her for the door knob, catches her fingers on it and struggles a little more. Ah, there it goes, the handle catches, the door swings open and she presses her body the other way. Keeps them standing with equal and opposite force or some other law of physics that she never paid that much mind to. He is petting her hair, a wig of course but trailing his fingers through it. She wonders what it's like to have someone stroke their fingers through the long strands of your actual hair, wonders how it tugs at the scalp and if it hurts.

When she does finally get him to the edge of the bed she has only just managed to get him to step out of his boots - no easy feat, mind you, his hands braced on her shoulders as she fumbles with buckles - and peeled his coat off when he sways. She knows he is going down before he starts his descent and she, in what she realizes is foolishness, tries to stop him, hooks an arm around his broad back and tries to tip him back the other way. Only succeeds in having her arm pinned under his body on the bed, a plume of dust billowing up around them.

Perhaps she should have changed the sheets.

She berates herself for such a silly thought at a time like this and tugs, trying to move a mountain at her pinned arm. He makes a murmur of disapproval and Shilo scowls at him, wig askew, body held against his because he's got her trapped. Damn mountain of a man. He seems more real than other people, heavier as though he has more particles than everyone else. Perhaps that is the weight of him that draws her in, his gravitational pull.

"Shilo needs her arm back," she chides, scrambling up to try and kneel beside him, to wrench her arm out from under his back. He just rolls to one side, forcing her down onto the bed beside him with the pressure on his arm. She gives a frustrated shout and shoves at his chest.

She only succeeds in rousing him enough that one large hand comes up to wrap around hers, hold it against the warm beat of his heart in his chest. She takes a minute to consider her situation, pinned under the weight of him in a dusty bed in an unused room in a house that was a prison. She gives a sigh; a great heaving thing weighed down with years of being confined and hates him for keeping her here. As if she hasn't been trapped in this house enough for one life time. Enough for an eternity of lifetimes.

She tries to make herself relax, tells each muscle to let the tension, let the fight go. Starts at the bottom and works her way up until her shoulders drop, her spine relaxes and some of the headache forming behind her eyes slips away. It's easier than it ought to be. His breath is warm on her face and his heart beat is a comforting thrum against her palm. Graverobber is still burning like a furnace and the heat of him ebbs the stress out of her muscles, she can feel herself melting against him. Despite her better judgment.

Asleep he seems so human, soft at the edges and unlike his showman self. There is no three ring circus, no crowd to dazzle and even under his makeup he seems less theatrical. She wants to touch his mouth, see if his lipstick - not quite black, she realizes from this close up, the light from the hall spilling through the still open door to illuminate his face, but rather maroon, a stained purple, polychromatic and she feels foolish for thinking that anything about him could come in monochrome - is as slick as it looks.

Her arm is trapped under his body and the other is caught tight in his hand, she cannot move them and that is her excuse. At least that's the one she'll be sticking too if he catches her at this. His mouth is soft when he sleeps and the lipstick is waxy on her lips, tastes odd when her teeth catch at his lower lip, draw him down into a kiss. When he shifts against her, a tension rising in his body like the tide and licks his lips, laps at hers as a consequence she's terrified that she has woken him. That she'll have to explain this.

Taking advantage of you in the night? She'll say, laughing as if it couldn't possibly be true, no, no, you imagined it, you dreamed it up.

But he's still asleep and his mouth tastes faintly bitter so Shilo lets herself indulge for a moment. He'll be gone in the morning, a showman again, the ringleader, master of ceremonies and he'll _get this show on the road._ So she takes advantage of the time she's got, saves parts of him for when he's gone again.

**Author's note: **Hey, kids. I just wanted to take the time to thank my wonderful Beta, Catalin, who has been sick recently and _still_ makes time for me.

I'd also like to say a special thank you to Grace, who has been reviewing me. Because you don't have a FFN account I can't respond to you reviews as I have for others but I wanted to say that I really appreciate that you're taking the time to read and review. Your reviews are always so eloquent and careful. Thanks so much.


	7. Chapter 7

It is the sun that wakes her, slanting across her face through a crack in the curtains. Smog hangs low in the sky – she still doubts the stories of a blue sky – the light that filters through is weak, watery and anaemic. It manages, miraculously, to be enough to wake her. And somehow cheerful, as though the bravery on the part of the sun, just in rising is something to celebrate. Shilo can only see a sliver of sky, a smear of cloud in variants of grey. For a moment of whimsy she imagines the world outside her home - her sometime prison and slash or sanctuary – is a monochrome silver. Like an old movie of dames who spell trouble with a 'T' – capitalized like the 'G' of a God – or alternately "H-I-P-S". Dames with painted lips and silver whiskey eyes. One the blue and yellow damask of the wall paper assures Shilo that she is confined in a world separate from the fedora and piano bar silver screen beyond her curtains.

She consumes herself in this flight of fancy, tracing heavenward on a gun moll's cigarette, smoking gun, because she isn't ready just yet to deal with here and now. She is avoiding – because she cannot likely will not ignore – the press of a heavy arm on her waist, hand tucked up under the edge of her dress which has ridden up, legs for days up around her ribs. His fingers are rough with calluses and they curl on her skin, soft on her stomach. Silk and steel. There is a liquid warm on her skin, itching and contracting on the brittle edges of her bones. Her ribcage has tightened, bound in, corseted in with the improbably shiver of something not unlike fear. The feel is so deep, so burrowed into the flesh of her that she fears to think to hard on it, she knows that it will ooze away from her.

He is moving though, coming back to life – he sleeps like the dead in a frightening, fitting, all together disconcerting way – in parts. And he begins with his mouth, a wet gasping of breath against her throat. He burrows against her as if into her hair. Which is lying on the floor beside the bed; it makes new life for late 19th early 20th century ideas of a woman's hair as the metaphoric dual of her devotion to her man slash sexual slavery. The same ideas that flappers laughed at - sneered at, spit at - knocked back a tumbler of moonshine and hacked away their hair. Cropped locks, short skirts, sexual freedom. The moment he comes back to real awareness is the tightening of a spring, the cock of a gun.

The elastic between them stretches, he pulls back and she sees how far she can stretch it but gives, turns with him before it snaps. She is on her back. He is over her, hovering with zydrate eyes once more. His hand flexes on her stomach and he is graceless, wild with a toss of his parti-coloured mane. He smoothes his palm low on her flesh and sets her wriggling. His laughter is breathless, popped collar trench coat and he tips his head with the force of it.

"Fuck, kid," he hesitates then, cackles again like the crack of thunder, like _it was a dark and stormy _"well I guess we did."

"No," his laughter is bottled, stoppered in his throat, humor startled out of him by impossibly reality. She nods at his clothes, belt buckled, shirt rumpled but – you know – still on him. He makes a soft sound in this throat, a soft realization that puzzles him and, simultaneously, amuses him. His head cocks. A rainbow lion confused by his prey. She has done something he did not expect and she does it again, "disappointed?"

She is joking. She is expecting joking in return. A sneer and dancing eyes when he teases her, pushes the line she's still too much ingénue to be comfortable with. He gives her hard honesty, hangover pounding at his eyes it's all he's got for her.

"Yes," the glow in his eyes flutters, a TV losing signal. The bullet is in the chamber, the finger is on the trigger. They're playing it lethal here, "I am too old for this shit. Too fucking honest."

"Yeah," her fingers find his face; track it like she's blind. Like she tastes with the pads of her fingers. His brow furrows under her touch and she traces his manifold wrinkles. He leans in, leans close. The pillows dent where he braces himself against them, over her.

"You're wearing my lipstick," he flexes a finger on the trigger. Bluffs aggressively, lets a hand up so he can brush his thumb across the curve of her mouth. He rubs his thumb and for finger together, as though lipstick has come away, as though he is testing the wax of it. He holds there, hangs on the edge of a moment.

"Second hand," the gun fires and it is deafening silent. She squeezes the trigger. The gun kicks, rattles her bones, rattles her teeth, leaves her rattled. Like his eyes. She can smell the tang of gun smoke on his breath. Or maybe that's morning breath but his lips are on her and she doesn't give a fuck. She feels his hands everywhere and the dress comes off in a rush of cotton. Her skin slides against his bare chest – when did that happen? The question comes and goes in the time it takes her to pant for breath at the curve of his throat – and her black cotton bra seems childish. His fingers trail the underwire, linger with it on.

The look he gives her is a three ring circus, is all showman. Graverobber's eyes are bright, daring her. The next move is hers, for all that he is ringmaster in this moment, a mask, he is subtly and simultaneously a man many years her senior. He is giving her an out. Last stop before too far gone. Last chance. She lets if fly passed, curls her fingers at the horns of his belt buckle.

God sends her a sign in tarnished chrome: this way leads to sin, Shilo Wallace, this way leads to Hell. Satan is laughing in the rumbling lion's purr of Graverobber's laugh. Sin and salvation are abstracts she has no mind for just now. The blood is anywhere but her brain and she's oxygen starved. She tugs his belt out of his pants, curls her fingers into skin warmed leather.

Naked he is – inexplicably and frustratingly – less _naked_. He is less bare. He knows his power here and he moves with the muscles of a hunting cat. Goes primitive on her. He feeds with a wet mouth of kisses, makes the skin of her stomach jump under his lips.

He is surprisingly gentle with her, considerate, giving, thoughtful, Harlequin romance adjective goes here. She is startled a hundred times over by him and yet not. Because she catches glimpses of the man under the Graverobber. Afterwards he lies with his head on her stomach, one little hand held in both of his. He messes with her fingers. He fidgets. He is beast caged.

"You can go, you know," her voice comes rumbling, screamed raw and it makes him laugh, turn and rub his cheek on her stomach. He looks up the naked line of her and his smile is all Graverobber, all Dick Tracey and smug. His mouth slides a wet line on her stomach and for a second she thinks he'll stay. Watching him dress is like watching him put on his skin, put on his mask. She is reminded viscerally of the Pavi and wants to have a bit of a vomit. Sometimes she dreams he wears her mother's face and wakes up sweating.

Graverobber hesitates in the doorway, tossing her that lopsided smile of his and it is enough to shake her from her maudlin thoughts. He leans against her door, one foot cocked up against the wood, spine bowed. He is half whore, half mobster and it works on him. His knuckle bumps the wall and he dance step turns out of the room.

"Kid," he is almost leaving, tensed to take that first step away but making time, "I'll be back. You know that."

He doesn't vocalize the modifying, questioning "right?" because he doesn't have to. She knows now. The room echoes with just one body and she drapes an exhausted by it all hand across her eyes. Things are not going to be getting simple any time soon.


	8. Chapter 8

He comes back.

Promises are fulfilled and Shilo can feel pieces settle, like no more waiting. There is a lot of that these days. Of waiting. A lot of spaces between moments, where the air hangs strangely and her mind cobwebs. She is hanging in that space between moments when he comes back to her. Without so much as thinking of actually knocking on the door he lets himself in, looking smug as ever in the muted light of the front hall. All entitlement aside she is glad to see him, though he wouldn't know it by the way she lingers out of his reach.

He does reach for her, stretches one long arm out to try and snare her. She remembers the weight of that arm around her waist, the strength in it when he braced himself over. More she remembers how warm the skin of his bicep is under her hands. How the sweat there tasted when she was too lost in all of _him_ to care what she was kissing so long as his flesh was under her mouth. It's an intimacy of memory that she has never had with another person and it frightens her.

She is doe skittish and shies away from his hand, twists at the last minute so his fingers catch at lace and silk and fall short of actual contact. He will not let it go but rather eats the space between them in long legged strides until she is crowded between him and the wall. His breath skitters against her face and when his mouth finds hers it is with something akin to frenzy.

In the echoing pant that immediately follows the kiss – a rough thing all teeth and tongues – he smirks at her, eyes back lit by all his self assurance and so smug she wants to slap the look off his face. He ducks his head though, looks up at her like he's sharing a filthy secret.

"Let's be places other," he smirks, wags an eyebrow in what she's sure qualifies as a roguish manner – although she isn't quite sure what that means – and leans in, presses his weight on either side of her head, "You and me, kid, out of this crypt."

"I think," and she drawls it, takes a page from the movies and a learned sneer from his lips. She stole it when she was kissing him, "that if you're going to be _fucking_ me, you can call me Shilo."

"Shit," he gives a rough little laugh, an ill formed sound that is half incredulous and half pleased by her vulgarity. He laughs again, warm and low and his eyes slide away from their characteristic shine, go dark and – now this particularly makes her squirm – hazy because she has pleased him in some way. His head drops, his muscles strain as he _leans_ in to her, his breath on her skin "sin from my lips? Trespass sweetly urged, let me take my sin again."

"Shakespeare," the bard is a mumble between breaths, between the slide of lips and she arches into his arms. He does not ease her down; he drags her up his body until she is stretched on the very tips of her toes, clinging to his shoulders to keep on touching him. And she wants to be touching him. His mouth drags away and she breathes his breath. He fills her in a symbolic sort of way and her body slicks like it's perverse.

"Let's get out of here," he repeats it as though he has not just stolen her soul with his mouth and his hands and - oh, holy God - the not so safe edge of teeth on her pulse point. He wants out and she wants, well, she wants him _in_ but that's not for good girls and she is, even after everything, trying to be a _good girl_. So out, they'll go out. She'll play civilized. Even if he makes her want to go positively primeval.

They don't so much walk as dance. Graverobber, she realizes in something of a flight of fancy, does not walk. He struts, he runs, he waltzes, he dances and he never ever walks. And why should she expect him to. His fingers ribbon through hers, hands calloused and she knows they've done this before in a time before. The bar, when they get there – the Graverobber has some funny ideas about romantic places to take a girl; there's a back alley that has recently seen the pushpressgrind of a kiss gone primal – is ill lit, smoky and loud. It is everything that Shilo knew, just knew that it would be and nothing that she wants from their Big Night Out. This is Graverobber's scene and she's starting to realize – with sinking heart that beats low in her gut now – that really, if she's rational about this, she isn't a part of his scene. She's the fourth in his three ring circus and maybe there's no room to expand.

His audience is here, the mark's all set up. It's all writhing bodies and they want something from Graverobber so it's lights, baby, curtains up. He ushers her, through the throng of sweat slick skin that glances and brushes and sometimes _rubs_ against her until there is, for a second, nothing. It's a back booth, torn upholstery that looks like it was once fake snake skin and a table long scarred with use. Graverobber's hand is an anchor on the base of her spine, fingers twitching against the cotton of her blouse as he guides her back, guides her down.

For the first time in her life, Shilo _skooches_. Until this moment she hasn't understood exactly what the verbing entailed but as she slides against torn vinyl, leads with a hip in a motion that is distinctly graceless, she gets Oxford's clear on the definition. Skooching promises that there is someone who is going to be next to you, can't breathe for touching you close. Only that part never comes. She wriggles down in the booth, makes room for the man who is God here tonight and then waits. She is cold where her skin expected the press of his body, the tickle of faux fur at her shoulder as she leans into him. She wants heavy hands and the smell of stage make up but he is out of her reach. He perches back against the edge of the table, letting his hips settle on scarred wood, one leg lifting to rest on a nearby chair.

He is lounging like a king on his throne and his adoring public are eating it up.

There is no shortage of clientele and business is, after all, just business. He flickers like someone changing channels too quickly and goes ghost on her. He dances between personas like it is nothing to do so. The smile changes, the eyes fade, spark and change again, so fast that she is sick to the stomach watching it all. Trying to make sense – cents? He's making _cents_ - with a 'C' like the cunt that he's being, my my but there's a hard sort of pleasure she's found in cussing – and he is slipping away. She can feel it in her gut, like nausea building. A queasiness that finds the base of her gut and eats at her, gnaws with self doubt where bats once raced each other in delirious concentrics. She has the sense that he's a whore, in a manner of speaking. A whore of personality and - who is she to deny it? - impossible charisma. She comes to this moment of realization in what feels like hours – it's only minutes but _aye me_, sad hours seem long – after she has been skooched to the back of a booth. Out of the spotlight and out of the daylight – no, just a spotlight, Shilo's not about to make him any more of a God stand in than he already is – that is the world where he plies his trade.

He sells himself as much as his glow, gives a different dealer to each client with a strange sort of genius. He knows, newbie or regular, just what they want before they know it themselves and Business Man delivers. He is all things to all people. To some he's cajoling, a friendly face, friendly hand. To others he's hard eyed, cold and -she shudders, feels the cold hand of death – emotionally distant. They pay not for the drug but the trip and Graverobber changes his face, his voice, the lopsided twist of his mouth to suit every need. He is become ghost. Gone chameleon on her and cold blooded isn't working for her.


End file.
